“Dime la verdad, sé todo lo sincera que puedas”, le digo a la estudiante de Prácticas que en unos meses será profesora. “Dime de uno a diez, cuánto de lo que te ha enseñado la universidad te sirve para trabajar”. “¿De verdad?” Pregunta entre el temor a molestarme. “Como mucho un tres. Porque “el niño” no es un ente o una cosa, y eso es lo que enseñan”. No, los niños no son máquinas que vienen a la escuela a hacer fichas como autómatas. La vida no es sólo una cadena de montaje en la que se evalúa la cantidad que produces sin importar el proceso ni la calidad de lo producido. “¿Qué has hecho en el colegio?”, le digo a mi primo de cuatro años, “pues fichas, prima”, me responde sin dejar de ser consciente de que no puede hacer otra cosa, con su edad sólo se pueden hacer fichas ¿qué si no? Se me parte el alma como futura maestra, me desintegro como alumna, desaparezco como ciudadana. Y luego queremos que sean creativos y libres, que piensen por sí mismos, que constituyan una ciudadanía participativa y activa. ¿Queremos? No, lo que serán y seremos es aquello para lo que estamos siendo formados.
Después de un año como este, he podido experimentar y observar como alumna de magisterio y futura docente la escuela en múltiples aspectos, entonces al comparar “teoría y la práctica”, un sentimiento de contradicción, decepción y añoranza deja ver la puesta en escena. La docencia universitaria no sirve, hoy por hoy, para formar maestras y maestros que permitan forjar una ciudadanía de libre pensamiento. Con lo que ocurre en las aulas universitarias reforzamos el modelo reproductivo con tendencia al infinito y en espiral hacia adentro. Ni siquiera estamos formando bien a quienes parecen pensar por sí mismos, como lo explica Andrés Rábago “El Roto”, nos preparan para ser águilas y luego nos dan trabajo de buitres. Si necesitamos maestras y maestros que hagan pensar ¿por qué no nos enseñan a tomar decisiones?, si sabemos que vamos a trabajar en equipos interdisciplinares ¿por qué no nos ayudan a ser tolerantes?, si vamos a tener que adaptarnos a cualquier circunstancia ¿por qué no desarrollamos la capacidad de ser flexibles? ¿O es que no les interesa que pensemos por nosotros mismos?
Tal y como intenté exprimir todo aquello que dijo Tonucci en clase, aquel sabio, los niños y niñas de cuatro y cinco años piden “profes” que no griten, que no peguen, que no se enfaden tanto, que nos traten como personas, aunque midamos sólo un metro, que nos dejen hablar y nos escuchen, que nos abracen y nos besen… Queremos ser queridos y respetados. Piden lo que no les damos, ni con cuatro ni con veinte. No nos forman para ser parte de la ciudadanía y deberían hacerlo, nada de que eso se aprende en casa, no es verdad, o sí lo es para algunas familias, pero… Dejamos que esas habilidades “sólo” se trabajen con las madres y los padres; y así, la escuela termina reforzando las diferencias sociales en lugar de paliarlas. No puede ser que el sistema educativo no sirva para llegar a ser mejores personas, si no sirve para eso… ¿se puede saber para qué van a la escuela? ¿Alguien me puede explicar a qué venimos a la universidad?
Todavía no encuentro respuesta que me lleve a otros caminos que no sean intereses relacionados con la política y la economía, pero sí me gustaría compartir con vosotros una pequeña anécdota. Cuando William Lory recibía a los alumnos de la prestigiosa escuela de Eton, en el Reino Unido, les decía eso tan acertado:
“Venís a una gran escuela no para adquirir conocimientos, sino para adquirir artes y hábitos: el hábito de la atención, el arte de la expresión, el arte de daros cuenta en un simple momento de una nueva idea, el hábito de someteros a censura y refutación, el arte de indicar asentimiento y desacuerdo de manera graduada y medida, el hábito de fijaros en los detalles con exactitud, el hábito de saber hacer las cosas a su tiempo, el gusto y la discriminación, el valor mental y la sobriedad. Sobre todo, venís a una gran escuela para conseguir el conocimiento de vosotros mismos”.
lunes, 4 de julio de 2011
sábado, 25 de junio de 2011
The British Bust: How will Manchester renew itself after austerity sets in?
http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/united-kingdom/110309/manchester-austerity-economy
MANCHESTER, United Kingdom — Manchester is Britain's second city, not by population size, but by sheer energy and a quality it shares with America's second city, Chicago — residents carry a large chip on their broad shoulders, as anyone who has ever watched Oasis perform knows. Mancunians, like most people in the northern reaches of England, revel in their reputation for blunt speaking and hardness. They constantly mock the soft southerners who suck at the teat of London and its financial district.
The people of this city have been on the front line of every up and down in economic history since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The history of free-market capitalism can be read in the city's streetscape: imposing stone temples to imperial commerce; dark, satanic mills and warehouses crowding sunlight off the street; and slick, airy, glassed-in modern office buildings housing knowledge economy workshops. There are also the canals. There are so many waterways criss-crossing the city that Manchester could call itself the Venice of the North, if that wasn't such an arty-farty thing, the sort of appellation soft, southern PR guys might invent.
Overlooking one of those canals are the offices of BDP, Manchester's largest architectural practice. BDP was built by riding the latest phase of economic history: regenerating the city through public-private partnership.
"Local government is not the enemy of business," BDP Managing Director Gavin Elliott said. "Manchester city government has been pre-eminent in driving private sector investment, through public funding."
Read The British Bust, Part I [3] on how the people of Manchester have yet to feel the impact of drastic government budget cuts.
Twenty years ago, Manchester looked like many Rust Belt cities in the United States. The pure free-market economic theories pursued by Margaret Thatcher's government had led to two recessions in a decade, and with its manufacturing hey-day long past, the two downturns hit the city particularly hard. The story in the early 1990s was gun crime. While there was less to the Gun-chester story than met the eye, the grotesque public housing around the edge of downtown was proof of the impoverishment of the city.
Around that time, in typical Manchester fashion, the city's leaders decide to do something brash. They would bid for the Olympics! The first thing that needed to be done was spruce up the town. Public money primed the pump and soon Manchester became a building site. The canals were dredged and the derelict warehouses along them converted to residential apartments and lofts.
Manchester bid for the Olympics twice in 1996 and 2000, and failed each time. Gavin Elliott says that was not important. "You don't always bid to win. The important thing was using the process for capacity building."
For 15 years that strategy worked. The improved infrastructure and built environment enticed businesses to relocate and the private sector grew. Under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, there was large investment of public money in building new schools, hospitals and transport infrastructure.
Now that phase of Manchester's economic history is over.
Firms like BDP are having to re-invent themselves. BDP grew in the last decade and a half by focusing on designing schools. Money for those projects slowed when the banking crisis hit and came to a full stop when the Conservative-led coalition government came into office last May. BDP laid off 10 percent of its staff. The firm is looking abroad for commissions. "Five years ago, foreign projects counted for 10 percent of our turnover," said Elliott. "Today that number is 30 percent."
The private sector can be more nimble at reinvention than government. Down at the town hall, a spectacular monument to Manchester's status as the world's pre-eminent industrial city circa 1860, the executive members of the city council are still reeling.
"We were shocked! We were angered," said councillor Glyn Evans, when they found out just how much their grant from the British government was being cut.
The Conservative-led coalition took power in May and signaled there would be cuts. This was important for all local authorities to know in advance. The way local government is funded in Britain is incredibly complicated but the bulk of its budget comes in a grant from the central government in London. Evans said the council began preparing for a reduced grant for the financial year beginning in April but it wasn't until late autumn that their grant was finally announced.
The council has to find more than 109 million pounds ($177 million) in savings from the 2011-2012 budget, a further 60 million pounds ($97.7) has to be cut from April of next year. Seventeen percent of its workforce has to go. That is a lot of money and employment to take out of a city of approximately 490,000 people that is the hub of a metro area with an additional 2 million people. But it is the suddenness of the cuts that is so shocking. "Why aren't they being phased in gradually?" Evans asked.
The answer, of course, is politics. Cameron and his government came to office knowing they had to shrink the size of government to reduce the deficit. That meant job losses and services being cut back. Since the next election could be as late as 2015, Cameron and co. want to get the bad news out of the way early. They hope that in four years the economy will be growing, that the private sector will have picked up the slack in employment and voters will have forgotten the pain of cutting services.
Those who have to make the cuts as the British economy timidly steps out of recession — in the last quarter of 2010 the economy actually contracted by 0.6 percent — wanted to cut more slowly. Their theory is that if growth leads to improvements in employment and tax revenues it might be possible to pay down the deficit over a long period of time without making further cuts to public services.
Evans sits on the executive committee of the Manchester city council and is in charge of adult services. That includes overseeing care of the elderly, people with disabilities and the increasing number of people with dementia. He noted ruefully that much of the reporting so far on the upcoming cuts has focused on swimming pool and library closures. "If the council has to close a swimming pool that's an inconvenience. But what we do is literally life and death."
He added, "These last 10 weeks have been awful. I'm an ordinary working guy. I didn't get into government to make cuts to services."
But cut he will, and re-jig his services. The core mission of his department — helping adults with disabilities and the elderly without family to stay in their own homes rather than having to move to overcrowded institutions — will be severely challenged.
What happens next for Manchester is anybody's guess. The last time a British government so dramatically shifted the structure of the economy was in the first two years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Recession followed and the northern part of England bore the brunt. Manchester pulled itself out of the morass by re-discovering public-private partnership. Now the public part of that equation is being severely trimmed back. Can the private sector pick up the slack?
"In the short-term, no," said architect Gavin Elliott. "In the medium- to longterm, probably yes."
Manchester's two-century long history of bouncing back from the vicissitudes of the free market backs Elliott up, but re-invention doesn't happen overnight. And, let's face it, once you've played the Olympic bid card where can you go?
For the thousands who will be losing their jobs the next couple of years are a frightening prospect.
By Michael Goldfarb
MANCHESTER, United Kingdom — Manchester is Britain's second city, not by population size, but by sheer energy and a quality it shares with America's second city, Chicago — residents carry a large chip on their broad shoulders, as anyone who has ever watched Oasis perform knows. Mancunians, like most people in the northern reaches of England, revel in their reputation for blunt speaking and hardness. They constantly mock the soft southerners who suck at the teat of London and its financial district.
The people of this city have been on the front line of every up and down in economic history since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The history of free-market capitalism can be read in the city's streetscape: imposing stone temples to imperial commerce; dark, satanic mills and warehouses crowding sunlight off the street; and slick, airy, glassed-in modern office buildings housing knowledge economy workshops. There are also the canals. There are so many waterways criss-crossing the city that Manchester could call itself the Venice of the North, if that wasn't such an arty-farty thing, the sort of appellation soft, southern PR guys might invent.
Overlooking one of those canals are the offices of BDP, Manchester's largest architectural practice. BDP was built by riding the latest phase of economic history: regenerating the city through public-private partnership.
"Local government is not the enemy of business," BDP Managing Director Gavin Elliott said. "Manchester city government has been pre-eminent in driving private sector investment, through public funding."
Read The British Bust, Part I [3] on how the people of Manchester have yet to feel the impact of drastic government budget cuts.
Twenty years ago, Manchester looked like many Rust Belt cities in the United States. The pure free-market economic theories pursued by Margaret Thatcher's government had led to two recessions in a decade, and with its manufacturing hey-day long past, the two downturns hit the city particularly hard. The story in the early 1990s was gun crime. While there was less to the Gun-chester story than met the eye, the grotesque public housing around the edge of downtown was proof of the impoverishment of the city.
Around that time, in typical Manchester fashion, the city's leaders decide to do something brash. They would bid for the Olympics! The first thing that needed to be done was spruce up the town. Public money primed the pump and soon Manchester became a building site. The canals were dredged and the derelict warehouses along them converted to residential apartments and lofts.
Manchester bid for the Olympics twice in 1996 and 2000, and failed each time. Gavin Elliott says that was not important. "You don't always bid to win. The important thing was using the process for capacity building."
For 15 years that strategy worked. The improved infrastructure and built environment enticed businesses to relocate and the private sector grew. Under the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, there was large investment of public money in building new schools, hospitals and transport infrastructure.
Now that phase of Manchester's economic history is over.
Firms like BDP are having to re-invent themselves. BDP grew in the last decade and a half by focusing on designing schools. Money for those projects slowed when the banking crisis hit and came to a full stop when the Conservative-led coalition government came into office last May. BDP laid off 10 percent of its staff. The firm is looking abroad for commissions. "Five years ago, foreign projects counted for 10 percent of our turnover," said Elliott. "Today that number is 30 percent."
The private sector can be more nimble at reinvention than government. Down at the town hall, a spectacular monument to Manchester's status as the world's pre-eminent industrial city circa 1860, the executive members of the city council are still reeling.
"We were shocked! We were angered," said councillor Glyn Evans, when they found out just how much their grant from the British government was being cut.
The Conservative-led coalition took power in May and signaled there would be cuts. This was important for all local authorities to know in advance. The way local government is funded in Britain is incredibly complicated but the bulk of its budget comes in a grant from the central government in London. Evans said the council began preparing for a reduced grant for the financial year beginning in April but it wasn't until late autumn that their grant was finally announced.
The council has to find more than 109 million pounds ($177 million) in savings from the 2011-2012 budget, a further 60 million pounds ($97.7) has to be cut from April of next year. Seventeen percent of its workforce has to go. That is a lot of money and employment to take out of a city of approximately 490,000 people that is the hub of a metro area with an additional 2 million people. But it is the suddenness of the cuts that is so shocking. "Why aren't they being phased in gradually?" Evans asked.
The answer, of course, is politics. Cameron and his government came to office knowing they had to shrink the size of government to reduce the deficit. That meant job losses and services being cut back. Since the next election could be as late as 2015, Cameron and co. want to get the bad news out of the way early. They hope that in four years the economy will be growing, that the private sector will have picked up the slack in employment and voters will have forgotten the pain of cutting services.
Those who have to make the cuts as the British economy timidly steps out of recession — in the last quarter of 2010 the economy actually contracted by 0.6 percent — wanted to cut more slowly. Their theory is that if growth leads to improvements in employment and tax revenues it might be possible to pay down the deficit over a long period of time without making further cuts to public services.
Evans sits on the executive committee of the Manchester city council and is in charge of adult services. That includes overseeing care of the elderly, people with disabilities and the increasing number of people with dementia. He noted ruefully that much of the reporting so far on the upcoming cuts has focused on swimming pool and library closures. "If the council has to close a swimming pool that's an inconvenience. But what we do is literally life and death."
He added, "These last 10 weeks have been awful. I'm an ordinary working guy. I didn't get into government to make cuts to services."
But cut he will, and re-jig his services. The core mission of his department — helping adults with disabilities and the elderly without family to stay in their own homes rather than having to move to overcrowded institutions — will be severely challenged.
What happens next for Manchester is anybody's guess. The last time a British government so dramatically shifted the structure of the economy was in the first two years of Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Recession followed and the northern part of England bore the brunt. Manchester pulled itself out of the morass by re-discovering public-private partnership. Now the public part of that equation is being severely trimmed back. Can the private sector pick up the slack?
"In the short-term, no," said architect Gavin Elliott. "In the medium- to longterm, probably yes."
Manchester's two-century long history of bouncing back from the vicissitudes of the free market backs Elliott up, but re-invention doesn't happen overnight. And, let's face it, once you've played the Olympic bid card where can you go?
For the thousands who will be losing their jobs the next couple of years are a frightening prospect.
By Michael Goldfarb
martes, 21 de junio de 2011
domingo, 19 de junio de 2011
El niño de Camposoto
El titular de prensa que tengo más a mano dice exactamente:
"Denuncian al colegio de Camposoto por supuestos malos tratos a un niño autista."
¿Qué haría un padre si su niño de 6 años con autismo llegase a su domicilio con veinte cardenales y al ir a pedir explicaciones en el colegio no le dijeran nada?
¿Qué haría ese mismo padre si al mes del suceso hubiera una repetición de los hechos, esta vez con seis cardenales? ¿Los denunciaría ante quien fuera o se callaría?
Los padres de este colegio, específicamente los padres del aula de integración del colegio de primaria de Camposoto, se han puesto del lado de los profesores. Del lado de la víctima, (porque no lo olviden, la víctima es el niño), no.
Así tenemos que dichos padres se movilizan en apoyo del profesional. Los padres entregan escritos a la inspección de la delegación provincial y a la propia delegada de educación de la provincia de Cádiz.
En ambos escritos expresan su sorpresa, ya que en dos años que lleva abierta el aula no ha surgido ningún problema, pero resulta que siempre hay una primera vez para las cosas. Por ejemplo: en más de 400 años no se había suspendido una procesión de la Virgen del Rocío por causa de la rotura de barra del palio del paso de la blanca paloma. Sin embargo el 13 de junio de 2011 se suspende por primera vez.
Otro ejemplo: desde su creación hace más de 30 años, nunca antes habían dimitido de su cargo tres miembros del Tribunal Constitucional, y sin embargo el mismo día 13 de junio van y dimiten. Debe ser mentira porque nunca antes había ocurrido.
Al haber denunciado a la propia delegación provincial de educación, es lógico que el informe emitido por ésta a finales del mes de mayo juzgara que ella era inocente, que los profesores habían actuado correctamente. En concreto ese informe habla de que el aula de integración ese día la ocupaba la maestra de educación especial que atiende el aula del centro, junto con la monitora del aula y una voluntaria de la asociación de autismo de Cádiz que colabora con el colegio.
Pasados unos minutos el niño de 6 años comenzó a autolesionarse y entre las tres y el profesor de educación física redujeron al niño y lo calmaron.
Cabría hacerse muchas preguntas como por ejemplo, de dónde han salido los cardenales si en el momento de reducir y calmar al niño no presentaba ninguno. Es necesario indagar sobre la presencia de una persona ajena a la plantilla en ese recinto. Habría que preguntarse también a quién se está procesando; está claro que la Asociación de padres y los profesores del centro ya han juzgado al padre de la criatura y, no contentos con esto, ya han emitido un veredicto contra él.
Pero ¿dónde queda el niño en este maremagnum de sucesos sin explicar?
Autor: César Giménez. 15 de junio de 2011.
http://www.derechoshumanosya.org/node/1068
"Denuncian al colegio de Camposoto por supuestos malos tratos a un niño autista."
¿Qué haría un padre si su niño de 6 años con autismo llegase a su domicilio con veinte cardenales y al ir a pedir explicaciones en el colegio no le dijeran nada?
¿Qué haría ese mismo padre si al mes del suceso hubiera una repetición de los hechos, esta vez con seis cardenales? ¿Los denunciaría ante quien fuera o se callaría?
Los padres de este colegio, específicamente los padres del aula de integración del colegio de primaria de Camposoto, se han puesto del lado de los profesores. Del lado de la víctima, (porque no lo olviden, la víctima es el niño), no.
Así tenemos que dichos padres se movilizan en apoyo del profesional. Los padres entregan escritos a la inspección de la delegación provincial y a la propia delegada de educación de la provincia de Cádiz.
En ambos escritos expresan su sorpresa, ya que en dos años que lleva abierta el aula no ha surgido ningún problema, pero resulta que siempre hay una primera vez para las cosas. Por ejemplo: en más de 400 años no se había suspendido una procesión de la Virgen del Rocío por causa de la rotura de barra del palio del paso de la blanca paloma. Sin embargo el 13 de junio de 2011 se suspende por primera vez.
Otro ejemplo: desde su creación hace más de 30 años, nunca antes habían dimitido de su cargo tres miembros del Tribunal Constitucional, y sin embargo el mismo día 13 de junio van y dimiten. Debe ser mentira porque nunca antes había ocurrido.
Al haber denunciado a la propia delegación provincial de educación, es lógico que el informe emitido por ésta a finales del mes de mayo juzgara que ella era inocente, que los profesores habían actuado correctamente. En concreto ese informe habla de que el aula de integración ese día la ocupaba la maestra de educación especial que atiende el aula del centro, junto con la monitora del aula y una voluntaria de la asociación de autismo de Cádiz que colabora con el colegio.
Pasados unos minutos el niño de 6 años comenzó a autolesionarse y entre las tres y el profesor de educación física redujeron al niño y lo calmaron.
Cabría hacerse muchas preguntas como por ejemplo, de dónde han salido los cardenales si en el momento de reducir y calmar al niño no presentaba ninguno. Es necesario indagar sobre la presencia de una persona ajena a la plantilla en ese recinto. Habría que preguntarse también a quién se está procesando; está claro que la Asociación de padres y los profesores del centro ya han juzgado al padre de la criatura y, no contentos con esto, ya han emitido un veredicto contra él.
Pero ¿dónde queda el niño en este maremagnum de sucesos sin explicar?
Autor: César Giménez. 15 de junio de 2011.
http://www.derechoshumanosya.org/node/1068
sábado, 18 de junio de 2011
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